I’m going to warn you now. If you’ve only heard the news from the mainstream media, everything you think you know about Katrina flooding New Orleans is wrong. If you think you already know everything there is to know about Katrina, then you can safely ignore this post. – If the sum total of your interest in New Orleans flooding is to bash Nagin or Bush, then please… Go to where your intellect will be more appreciated. If you’d like to have your whole understanding of the Great Flood of New Orleans changed, hang on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
We’ve all heard the story, in the early morning hours of Aug 29, 2005, the Category 4 Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, overwhelming the New Orleans levee system and flooding the city. If you read Wizbang, you’ve known since early October of 2005 this story was fatally flawed.
In the months since Katrina, we’ve learned that the storm was a Category 1 by the time she hit New Orleans. No “Super Hurricane,” just an average storm. We’ve also learned that the New Orleans Hurricane Protection System was not overwhelmed by Katrina, it collapsed. Causing the Corps of Engineers admit they flooded New Orleans not Katrina… An admission that got scant little media coverage. The Great Flood of New Orleans was not a natural disaster but a man made one.
The reason the Corps finally had to admit responsibility was that the floodwall that failed -flooding 70% of the city- basically collapsed under its own weight. It was undeniable. The Corps tried for months to claim the water came over the top of the floodwall and washed it away from the backside. (Which would make it Congress’s fault) Everyone who has seen the break or looked at the surge data knew this was a lie; that the wall suffered a catastrophic failure before the water reached the top. Almost a year later, the Corps admitted that the floodwall suffered from multiple fatal design flaws and failed prematurely.
What was not really told to the public however is how high the water got up the walls before they failed. – This is an important question to a city rebuilding ~$250 billion in infrastructure. It is commonly assumed by the public that the water must have been quite high.
The question also has legal ramifications. Sovereign Immunity says citizens can not sue the government for damages unless there is negligence or Congress allows the government to be sued. If the public assumption is that Katrina was responsible for the flooding, Congress would never allow the government to be sued.
Perhaps that explains why Congress confiscated a video of the floodwall collapsing and refused to let the public see it until (a perfectly timed) 10 months after the storm. – Well after the storm passed but a few months before the current 1 year anniversary hype.
You’ve probably never seen it, but we have video taken by New Orleans firefighters as the 17th street canal floodwall was actually in the process of breaking during Katrina. It answers the question of just how prematurely the walls failed. The video was obtained by the National Geographic channel and aired a few weeks ago. (it took me a while to blog it, so sue me)
The video -if you understand it- is shocking. Sadly, no one at National Geographic or even the local TV station got the significance of the video. — Because they were looking at the wrong thing.
I’m going to explain what is on the video that no one caught and I’ll do my best to give you a good understanding of the whole thing.
Before I type their whole story, watch the firefighters’ story as told by a local TV station a couple of months ago. As you watch the video, don’t worry about the pictures for now, we’ll get to them. For now, listen to the reporter and the firemen tell their story.
You can also see the video here.
Other than the heroism of the NOFD, let’s look at the rest of the video and why it is so revealing. As the fireman said, the wall broke before 9AM. I have a picture taken from a house just a few meters from the break and they left a simple message on their gutted house for the whole world to see about the timing of the break.
This one isn’t, but most other pictures are clickable.
As you can see the water was high enough to kill a battery powered wall clock by 8:57.
As it turns out, the wall gave way in stages. (Which is logical if you’ve ever hit a lump of mud with a garden hose.) Sometime about 8:30AM it started to leak enough to flood the houses across the street from the break. Sometime a little after 9AM (as per the firemen) the wall slipped some more and was in the condition we see it in the video. Later, about 10:30AM a Coast Guard helicopter pilot saw the wall give way and burst wide open as we’ve all seen in the now infamous pictures:
Via Wikipedia, very clickable
So as a recap, the video we have is roughly 30 minutes after it started leaking and about an hour and a half before it gave way all together. The damage is still limited to feet not blocks. Now watch the video again:
You were probably, like everyone else, looking at the wall closest to the camera. If you did that, you were looking at the wrong wall. Look at the other wall across the canal. Here’s a screen shot.
This is the smoking gun. Go ahead and click on it.
And/Or watch the video a few more times.
If you look at the top of the image in the band where the color is shifted, you see the other wall of the canal. Notice the weeds on the bank? Notice how far from the top of the wall the water is… just minutes after it started leaking but over an hour before it gave way. (BTW- This is a cap from the NGC special, not WWL. Their video was a little cleaner.)
Here is another picture of that same wall -over a week after the storm had passed- after the repair is in place… In other words, with the water at “normal” levels.
Look familiar? I reduced it to make it look like the screen cap. It’s clickable.
You can watch the video several times and you’ll clearly see the water was at this level the whole time. In fact the weeds look taller in this picture because the video was shot form so high up. BTW- If you look at the very base of the weeds in the good picture, you can barely see some white rocks in the water. (it will be more clear later)
Here’s a few more shots taken in the few weeks after the storm:
This is right after the repair was made. You’ll notice (on right) I was there at low tide.
This is what got me suspicious just a week after the storm. Anyone in the area knew that wall never saw floodwater…(It was a very low tide)
EVERYTHING the water touched was caked in mud.The wall, on both the front and back, was clean. It had to be dry. Notice I got there just after they got the water out of the area… The mud is still wet. I won’t tell you how I got in, I’ll just tell you that some National Guardsman from South Carolina (with a loaded M-16) never heard of social engineering.
The Governor had a little bit better view than me. She didn’t even wave. (Horrible composition, I know, don’t remind me.)
This is a great perspective. It is taken at low tide from the break side. In this picture, you can see the white rocks in the water the tide is so low. The wall is so tall BTW that I’m 6’3″ and I’m standing on top a pickup truck to take this. And I still couldn’t reach the camera above the wall the way I wanted. AND the truck is on a road they built up to fix the break. The top of the wall is probably 15ish feet above the water level.
The bottom line is, Katrina’s storm surge did not wash the wall away. As you may remember, water had been seeping under the floodwall at the break location for about a year before Katrina. The ground under the levee was soaked and ready to give at any moment…
New Orleans was doomed with or without Katrina, we just didn’t know it. A good high tide puts more water in the canal than this. As the video shows, the water was barely higher than normal levels. The walls could have failed on a decent high tide.
From the looks of the video the fact the wall failed when Katrina was approaching was really coincidence. Yes, Katrina was the “final straw” but so could any winds from the southeast. Or any given winter storm. (we often get winds out the south that “stack” the lake far higher than this.) Indeed these same walls held much higher surges in the past; that is, before they were undermined by seeping water for a year.
Ironically the same flawed walls are incrementally safer now. We’ll never have water seeping under them for a year and nobody doing anything. The flaw(s) is still there but now we can compensate for it more effectively. The right answer, of course, is to replace them.
What I will say next will probably completely throw you. Katrina saved probably over 50,000 lives.
That levee was doomed. If it had failed without notice, the death toll would have been measured in tens of thousands. There would be no evacuation, no preparation, no Feds at all. (such that they were anyway) no Coast Guard in choppers etc. Tens of thousands of people would have been dead in hours and tens of thousands more would have died on 120 degree rooftops waiting for rescue. It would have been unimaginable. – More unimaginable.
“Luckily” -and I groan when I say that- Katrina allowed the city to be evacuated.
I’ve said it for months. Katrina didn’t flood New Orleans. She just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But what I find just as troubling is the history of this video. It was turned over to Federal authorities just days after the storm. The firemen who took it were told they would be fired if they spoke about it. For months the Corps -who had to have seen the video- claimed the walls were overtopped. For months the firemen listened to the lies and never said a word.
There was no national security reason to hold the video as there might be of a terrorist attack. In fact the video would have helped the scientists studying it determine the cause. Congress had the firemen testify behind closed doors then placed a gag order on them.
I routinely mock conspiracy theorists but I have trouble understanding why this tape was withheld for months. What I also find interesting is that the Corps denied they were to blame until June 1… Just TWO WEEKS before this video was quietly released.
Perhaps, I’m too cynical but it is impossible for me not to notice that if this tape had been released in the weeks after the storm, the media coverage -and the scrutiny of Congress- would have been vastly different.
You may draw a different conclusion but I’ll go to my grave believing that Congress withheld this tape intentionally. It was too damning.
What I don’t understand is where the media is today on this story… The story of their lives is waiting to be told but they just ignore it. If you didn’t read Wizbang, you’d never know the true story of the Great Flood of New Orleans.
Playing Devil’s advocate with myself.
I know what some of you are thinking. (I know because I wondered about it myself…) The water in the canal was higher (exerting more force on the wall) before the wall broke but it is lower in the video because of the break. I was planning on doing a fair amount of work – including pictures, graphs and mathematical equations about flow rates- to disprove this; both to myself and to you. But really there is no need. The canal is about 150 feet across and 10 feet deep. That’s a big pipe! Just about 4 blocks away is a lake that measures roughly 26 miles high by 60 miles wide. (That’s whole bunch of water) There is no way that a hole as small as shown in this video produced any localized reduction in the level of the canal. Just scroll up and look at the aerial picture of the canal and notice the cars on the bridge as scale. Then go back and look at the video and notice the water in the canal was level the whole way and surprisingly calm.
There’s no need for complicated analysis. Just looking at the scale killed the theory. I might guess the water was up 1.5 feet and you’d guess 3.5. – Whatever. The video is probably not an exact enough tool to get that precise.. But it does show beyond any doubt the water was at near regular levels when the wall failed. And certainly below where it had been many times.
And a word about the comments:
If you’re clamoring to talk trash about George Bush or Ray Nagin, please… do it here.
If you are one of the various people who for the last year have ridiculed me in the comments section for saying the Corps flooded New Orleans… Well, I can’t help you. I’ve explained it for a year, the Corps admitted they flooded New Orleans and I just gave you incontrovertible photographic proof.
At this point if you don’t believe it, please take to your own blog and prove me AND the Corps itself both wrong.
If you’d like to make the case that I’m overboard when I say Congress withheld the video… well, we’ll have to agree to disagree. There was no reason to make the firefighters testify behind closed doors. You’re free to draw your own conclusions. As I said, I’ll go to my graving believing the tape was withheld on purpose.
I just wish the media would do their job now that it’s released. We saw the mediagasm when the AP released the footage of Bush being briefed. This is an order of magnitude or so more important.
And a big hat tip to Laura who emailed me about the WWL report and from whom we swiped the video file. And to Kenny who runs Bonaire Resort for the screen grab.
[Editors Note: This is, in a way, the culmination of our (mostly Paul’s) extensive Katrina coverage from the local perspective, going back to before the hurricane hit on this day before the 1st anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. There are approximately 175 Katrina posts in our Katrina archives,including a the devastatingly accurate predictions about riding out Katrina in The Superdome, unused school buses, media failures, government failures, and plenty on the Corps. While the post below contains many links, some times the balance between covering new ground on a story and rehashing previous posts has to be tilted toward the former. We’ve made perusing the archives easy – if you’re looking for more detail you should spend some time digging through the archives.]
Hey, the special on the “when the levees broke”
is on HBO right now. Very interesting, it wasn’t a levee failing after all, it was an I-wall, the city wouldn’t give them the property to build a ‘levee’ so they had to build an I-wall. Still should have to meet minimum requirements. They didn’t say when they were built.
Riiiight,
Here’s the guilt right from the report!
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been building levees along the Mississippi River since the late 1800s. The artificial, reinforced soil embankments are designed to curb periodic and destructive floods.
But determining the level of protection needed versus what Congress and the public are willing to pay for isn’t often easy.
Acceptable risks must be weighed, including the statistical likelihood of catastrophic events and the possible consequences if they do occur, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials.
The designs were developed to deal with a specific hazard level, the Standard Project Hurricane as defined in 1965; however, little consideration was given to the performance of the system if the design event or system requirements were exceeded.
The storm surge levels in the IHNC exceeded the design levels, and lower structure elevations, reduced over 2 ft by 35 years of subsidence, contributed to the amount of overtopping that occurred.
There was no evidence of government or contractor negligence or malfeasance. With the exceptions noted below, the system was generally built as designed, and design approaches were consistent with local practice. However, several factors described below significantly impacted the system’s performance during Katrina.
Now, go and read the report before you shoot off your mouth. I’ll take the word of 12 Engineers with P.H.D’s over yours any day…
I said I didn’t know when they were built, I guessed due to them being “authorized in 1965”
If the Empire State Building stood for 10 years and then blew over, would you blame the designers?
Paul I agree that the levee broke before the point of maximum surge. Fascinating. A point I had never considered.
I’d like to see more follow-up investigation into the three years of Corps work done on the bridge about 200 feet from the breach, and finished 60 days before the storm.
All of the heavy equipment was parked on the levee very near the breach site that whole time.
Barry I was talking to some roofers from Florida. (They said they still had biz in Florida but wanted to see what was up in NOLA) I asked about the number of roofs damaged vs a “typiclal” storm in Fla.
He said that it looked about the same as most.
That surprised me… We have not had a big storm to “cull” the old roofs in quite some time. AND Florida has had tougher building codes for some time. More nails per shingle etc.
I -thought- we’d have more roofs damaged but he says no. BUT this is one guys opinion and frankly he didn’t seem to have put much thought into it.
–
Also another tidbit, we had a hail storm a few years back and many people got new roofs. One local roofer told me that can work against you in a storm.
As a roof ages the tar shingles melt together and form a big mass. A newish roof hasn’t had time to do that. So you want a middle aged roof for a hurricane. – Who knew?
Don’t know if that answered your question but that’s about all I know about roofs and hurricanes. 😉
>All of the heavy equipment was parked on the levee very near the breach site that whole time.
Interesting idea but a non-starter… (see that wikipenda image above)
On the Orleans side of the canal, the houses are built with their backs facing the wall. In other words you look out your back door and see a 13 foot tall concrete wall.
The break was several blocks from the bridge. For the heavy equipment to have been parked on the break, they would have had to have driven it thru people’s back yard.
I-wall (not a levee) was finished in 1998 and it was reported that the contractor stated that he didn’t build it to specifications but it was accepted anyway by the Corp of Engineers. Leaking started soon after, wasn’t corrected. Seems like a lot of blame to go around, but I will now concede I would put most of it on Corp., but even then if it wasn’t in conformity to their specs. If they were approved specs and it met those. then?
Nahanni pretty much nailed it, people can paint anything they want, thats the problem, no real understanding, just a picture of what someone else wants you to buy. it’s too bad people buckle under pressure & blame others for their own bad decisions, a fools paradise with a political agenda
Thanks, Paul. That makes sense. I was really struck by the blue tarps. Geez a real Cat 3 or 4 would have been more horrific (if possible).
My mom had to have her roof replaced (original asbestos roof from house built in 1941). There was a lot of rangling with State Farm (which only wanted to repair a portion after three or four contractors said the whole thing must go). After a contractor took photos at a good angle showing how the wind had lifted up tiles that would let water into spaces S.F. adjustor couldn’t see (and I helped her write a letter to insurance commissioner when the adjustor and the contractor almost got into a fist fight in front of my 77 yr. old mother), S. F. relented.
A few comments more…
As an engineer, I find expecting the flood protection system in NOLA to work to be absurd. There are too many points of possible failure – meaning that the probability of engineering mistakes making it into the final construction was very high; the probability of initial assumptions or even measurements being wrong was high; the probability of some construction not meeting design specifications was high – especially in the corrupt NOLA environment. That there were many failures shows how high these probabilities were. Add to that the fact that only a single point of failure in any particular structure would cause a whole lot of flooding and this whole project looks hubristic.
When you the consider that the political and funding situation described by Big D, it’s obvious that there’s plenty of blame to go around, and its even more clear that the project was doomed. Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence (at least from this distance) that NOLA did not take hurricanes seriously. The city’s disaster plan failed to meet FEMA standards. Furthermore, it wasn’t carried out. Emergency generators were below expected flood levels. Inadequate provisions were made for maintaining radio communications.It goes on and on. The local government, true to its national reputation, is a disgrace and in fact disgraced itself in this event. I have rarely seen a place so unprepared for an inevitable disaster.
I went to bed the night before landfall knowing that New Orleans would be underwater the next day. It was inevitable. My shock was in hearing that it hadn’t flooded – a widespread news report that turned out to be wrong.
As for the statement by the COE. Consider the politics: If they take the blame, whose head rolls? The engineering was done long ago. There’s nobody to hit. Congress gets off the hook. Local government (which has great power through congress over COE funding) gets off the hook. Of course GOE took the blame – they could get away with it, and nobody else could or would. Do I think COE made mistakes? Yes. Was it inevitable that they would make those mistakes? Yes – that’s how big government agencies work – especially under the circumstances.
As for the strength of the hurricane, the only winds mentioned with the S-S scale are the maximum sustained winds anywhere in the storm (meaning really the left eyewall). This storm did have high category 5 surge, but the levels in the canals were, as Paul mentioned, not extremely high, but they were some number of feet above normal – enough to put a lot of stress on the walls – stress which goes up nonlinearly with water height.
I think the idea of rebuilding NOLA is absurd. 122 BILLION dollars has gone into that disasater. That’s not just pocket change. It makes a lot more sense to preserve the core of the city (it isn’t a coincidence that the French Quarter is a high area – anything that old had to have been built on high ground). It makes sense to preserve a shipping port. Beyond that, if NOLA residents want it rebuilt, they damned well ought to pay for it themselves, rather than blaming the system the rest of us paid for when it inevitably failed, and then wanting us to put it back together again.
BTW, Paul, I’m not from MS. I’m in Arizona.
John Moore,
And just who is going to drive from Baton Rouge or wherever every day to work at the port? To have the port you need the city. Or should we just shut down all of the Midwestern agribiz that relies on the River for affordable shipping and let most of the region go back to looking like west Texas? Oh, and be prepared to take it in the kiester on gas & electricity since a full third of your oil and natural gas comes through us.
>I-wall (not a levee) was finished in 1998 and it was reported that the contractor stated that he didn’t build it to specifications but it was accepted anyway by the Corp of Engineers
Dude, when you pretended to be someone you where not you lot credibility…
When you start quoting Spike “Whitey blew up the Levee” Lee, you just consigned yourself to eternal damnation.
Good Night.
>As an engineer, I find expecting the flood protection system in NOLA to work to be absurd. There are too many points of possible failure –
I feel the EXACT same way about California.
>meaning that the probability of engineering mistakes making it into the final construction was very high;
Well as long as the Corps is on the job, ya got me there.
>the probability of some construction not meeting design specifications was high – especially in the corrupt NOLA environment.
But the final report said there was not a single problem with the local construction. I love you gusy who refuse to accept what even the Corps has – that they screwed up- and still try to blame omnipotent “corruption.”
>When you the consider that the political and funding situation described by Big D,
DING! You just quoted a sorce who makes shit up out of whole cloth. Next you’ll quote Spkie Lee.
Your credibility just plunged to -50
But nice try.
I was linked to your site from another blog. I read what you had to say, it sounded good, but I had some questions, so I brought them up. I can say that after asking and with your answers, I now understand you and your motive.
1. You are an arrogant a*shole.
2. you are more than clueless, You don’t have a f*cking clue
3. You think you have a tracking program that works in stating that me and someone else is the same. You wasted your money on that software. It fed you garbage. If you think it works, send me the numbers in my street address. The failure to do so will prove my point.
4. You certainly are not an engineer. An engineer wouldn’t let you wipe his a*s.
5. You won’t have to be concerned with me posting on your site again. You don’t need to block me. I won’t be sending, I’m sh*tcanning you. you ain’t worth my time. Keep it up, your readership will go to zip.
6. I didn’t quote Spike Lee. that’s another example of your ignorance.
7.You trigger on key words and fly off on a tangent without even reading the context. That makes you a clown.
8. Your purpose seems to be to “blame someone” other than the ones that are to blame, the ignorant a*sholes that elected and re elected Ray Nagin.
9. you get your news from some such source as CNN or MSNBC that are even more clueless than you. Whoops, that’s not possible. Oh well, about the same as you then.
Adios, MF
greg,
the tradeoff of risk and cost will become a prominent reality for anyone trying to rebuild in NOLA…as the insurance companies will either refuse to issue homeowners policies in NOLA, or the rates will be sky high.
High risk –> high cost
Sigh:
—————-
Hey, the special on the “when the levees broke”
is on HBO right now. Very interesting, it wasn’t a levee failing after all, it was an I-wall, the city wouldn’t give them the property to build a ‘levee’ so they had to build an I-wall. Still should have to meet minimum requirements. They didn’t say when they were built.
Posted by: For Enforcement at August 29, 2006 11:33 PM
—————
6. I didn’t quote Spike Lee. that’s another example of your ignorance.
Posted by: For Enforcement at August 30, 2006 06:13 AM
——————–
Have another drink dude, have another drink.
3. You think you have a tracking program that works in stating that me and someone else is the same. You wasted your money on that software. It fed you garbage. If you think it works, send me the numbers in my street address. The failure to do so will prove my point.
Kenneth I not only know who you are, I know what you were doing in Norfork VA in the winter of 1957 – 1858.
Is there anything else you’d like me tell you?
How long did that take? 5 minutes?
Ohh, ohh, can I play?
For Enforcement, er, I mean Kenneth; the numbers in your street address are 5630. And the comment from “Worried,” that’s from you as well…
Kenneth I not only know who you are, I know what you were doing in Norfork VA in the winter of 1957 – 1858.
Boy that must have been a difficult search, you have my email address and that info is in my AOL profile. And it took you five minutes to look up a profile on AOL? My 6 year old grandson could have done that.
1858.? How old would I have been in 1858
and I notice you didn’t send the numbers in my street address.
Are all your numbers on your site this accurate?
Probably.
I don’t see any that are any more accurate. You trust software that can’t get just those kind of basic numbers right?
Oh, you’re not gonna blame the software, you’re gonna blame yourself for getting the numbers wrong? my point exactly.
By the way, the years in the profile were correct, you just copied them wrong.
Sorry, I forgot, in No. 1 to add “ignorant”
besides, I’m not reading you anymore.
Nope. Didn’t read the assholes on line account. It’s called google.
But nice try.
BTW Did you notice Kevin was nice enough to supply the digits of your address?
You was pwned.
Below is a cut and paste from just up above, you will see in it that I say I live in S. La. Well just for the record, that street address you gave the numbers for are in N. Ga.
Now for all you people that read and believe this lying maniac, I have never lived in N. Georgia. Never. And this truly demonstrates that Paul doesn’t even read the posts that he flies off and makes up stuff about. In short if you’re believing anything he writes, you need to get a life.
And for the Dummy named Kevin, you aren’t even close.
You could’ve at least narrowed your search to S. La.
For God’s sake Paul, is everything on your blog made up to kiss your a*s?
Paul said “Nope. Didn’t read the assholes on line account. It’s called google.
Surrreee it is.
well as a result I’ve changed my profile on AOL so fuzzball’s can’t try to use it as proof of anything.
Pasted from above:
Now I see the real reason I didn’t pay attention when the guy from the Corp was talking, according to your post back then, it was Sept 24. Well, I live in south La and Hurricane Rita had already killed my power and it stayed out for a couple weeks, so I missed all that.
Wish they had kept their mouth shut and let the blame fell where it should’ve.
Posted by: For Enforcement at August 29, 2006 10:37 PM
Bullshit
That’s your IP address and the one used to for the post by “Worried.”
And now you’re banned…
Once again, yeoman work by Paul. Is his latest analysis definitive? Nope. Incredibly interesting? You betcha.
Paul gets a lot of crap for being, well, Paul. But is he right? Sure, his paranoid insults can be galactically off-putting. But is he right? Granted, his if-you-don’t-live-in-NO-then-shut-the-eff-up posturing can get old. But is he right? Clearly his Nagin apologias can be viewed as the literary equivalent of blue dress residue. But is he right?
He might be. He very well might be. If our options are limited to a) the MSM or b) Paul, which column you gonna order from?
Yeah. That’s what I thought.
Paul, I saw a link for your site mentioned on Texas RainMaker’s blog. You’ve done a great service letting people know the real story of the levee breach! Thank you.
As I posted on Texas Rainmaker’s blog, I think both of you should include your hurricane blog information in the Hurrican Digital Memory Bank http://hurricanearchive.org/about or email info@hurricanearchive.org for more info.
“Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank contributes to the ongoing effort by historians and archivists to preserve the record of these storms by collecting first-hand accounts, on-scene images, blog postings, and podcasts. We hope to foster some positive legacies by allowing the people affected by these storms to tell their stories in their own words, which as part of the historical record will remain accessible to a wide audience for generations to come.”
Actually the Corps first admitted it was their fault on April 6 not June 1.
Sorry I don’t have the link but it was in the Times Picayune
I live in Louisiana too, in the Alexandria area. I survived Andrew’s remnants, Lili in ’02 and Rita. We’re still full of evacuees. Another story that the major media is not covering is also related to the levees. The levees are sinking faster than the Corps thought they would and that also contributed to the breaches. An independent scientist went and did measurements back May I believe it was, at 1,000 different points. The Corps only measures at 100 different points. The scientist found that the levees were sinking nearly a foot faster than everyone believed they were. Quite damning to the Corps on many counts.
Having lived in LA all my life, with a good chunk of it over on the Mississippi River Delta, many of us are already not fond of the Corps. They’re not giving much of a reason for us to ever trust them again. South Louisiana fared MUCH better in Rita than N.O. did in Katrina. The idiots in N.O. oughta go take a look in the swamps and see how Cajuns build to withstand hurricanes. Their method works. And we’ve put our lives and homes back together WITHOUT the feds, thank you very much.
Paul,
It doesn’t matter who I quote, it’s the content. The poster simply did a good job of summarizing what has been widely reported elsewhere. NOLA is notorious for corruption. Do you deny that?
Furthermore, you took my analysis of conditional probabilities, excavated from it one item, and then attacked the whole thing.
You also ignore the political pressures present on the COE to cause them to play down any responsibility other than their own, because they were the safe scapegoat.
Do you really think that a system like New Orleans’, built under the conditions it was, would be expected to stand up to the event?
However, let’s put all the blame on the COE for the sake of argument. What is it that is being blamed? Some foolish engineer? Nope, lots have moved through there during the many decades the system has been under design and construction. An evil administrator? Oops, same comment. So just who the hell are you blaming?
And then, why don’t you explain WHY the COE let these failures happen and how you could prevent the same causes from producing the same results. And I don’t just mean the one I-wall break – I mean the many failures all around the system.
Are you an engineer? Do you understand the huge amount of work that has to be done, and the lack of certainty about the conditions and lack of total scientific knowledge about the problem?
Also, in blaming the COE, you point out that leaks had been reported for a long time. Is NOLA so devoid of engineers and political power that the entire city was helpless because the COE didn’t fix it? Didn’t anyone go to local universities and ask whether there just might be a problem? How about the crusading press? Good grief, if I knew of leaks around my neighborhood, I’d be raising hell until independent civil and hydraulic engineers convinced me it was not a problem, or until the problem was fixed. Why didn’t this happen?
Have you ever done any big engineering project? The *fact* that there many failures, of several different kinds, amply supports the thesis that the system was bound to fail. FURTHERMORE, the system was not designed to protect against a category 5 storm surge, a surge that in fact happened and was definitely responsible for some of the flooding, if not the case you looked at.
So NOLA, sitting in a prime target area for a cat-5 storm, happily went along knowing that when the cat-5 came along, it would flood the whole damned place, and the rest of us would pay big bucks to bail it out. How different would your story be if the storm had not swerved at the last minute and presented the weaker side to NO? What would you be saying if the CAT-5 had not suddenly lost wind speed and slightly changed course (the center missed NOLA by 12 mi)? No matter how good the engineering, NOLA would have been under water.
You have done nothing to prove that all of the fault is with the COE. You have extensively analyzed one particular failure, with commendable effort, and provided information about that event.
As for California, the comparison is flawed. Big eathquakes there are normal, and unlike NOLA, people expect and prepare for them. I’ve been through one and I didn’t live there long. But California doesn’t bet all of its safety on a single system. It has many ways of protecting against the inevitable earthquake damage, and its citizens are paying properly high insurance premiums because of the unavoidable damage. I would no more suggest putting $122 billion into CA than I would NOLA, even though CA is vastly more important to the economy (by itself, it is something like the 7th largest GDP in the world).
…….
Cybrludite – I strongly suspect that housing workers for a port is a problem that can be solved for a lot less than rebuilding NOLA and its flood control system. Build someplace a bit higher – not all of NOLA flooded, and you don’t need much of the original area in which to house the workers. Or, build in a smaller area where you can put a really big cat-5 level redundant protection system around it. Then build a road to the port.
You don’t need the large population of NOLA to run the port.
All I want from NOLA is the port, and the Preservation Hall still operating. The rest, you guys can pay for yourselves.
@Mikey
Paul gets a lot of crap for being, well, Paul. But is he right? … But is he right?
He might be. He very well might be.
Have you looked at his track record?
He’s been all over this story since before there was a Katrina. Look at that link about life in the Superdome. If Paul was in charge of FEMA it probably never would have happened.
Is he right on this one? I don’t know. But I do know he’s been more right than anyone else I’ve seen yet.
That’s what matters to me.
@John Moore
All I want from NOLA is the port, and the Preservation Hall still operating. The rest, you guys can pay for yourselves.
All I want is fools like you to shut the hell up. We can’t have everything in life.
I don’t see how this is such a huge deal. I mean, yeah it’s terrible, but it’s man made. People design flawed stuff.
If you’ve ever worked closely with a group of engineers you know that. At first I thought this post was going the way of the truthers.
It’s a terrible horrible tragedy. I know people in New Orleans. I had friends displaced. I watched in horror as this stuff happened, but the statement “the corps flooded New Orleans” is simply false.
that is right along the lines of saying “bush lied”.
I watched in horror as this stuff happened, but the statement “the corps flooded New Orleans” is simply false.
Heh- I should write a script to post this every 10 comments or so….
==================
I’m so confused. Help me out here. You said:
“I mean, yeah it’s terrible, but it’s man made. People design flawed stuff.” …
I watched in horror as this stuff happened, but the statement “the corps flooded New Orleans” is simply false.
So say that it WAS man’s fault but then you say it wasn’t the Corps. Can you tell me who DID design those flawed floodwalls? Cuz I’ll be pissed at them instead.
Paul, I think you make a good case for what has happened but you have to admit that it is awfully coincidental for the break to have occurred at the exact time that Katrina was in town. Have you been able to come up with any reasons or a mechanism that would have caused something to get pushed past a limit or threshold so that the break and the hurricane became simultaneous events?
Yes and no Vern…
What I mean is that some atypical weather event would be the eventual casue.
The question as I see it is how atypical?
A good spring tide (Not a tide during spring but when both the Sun and the Moon align to push the tides) might have done it. That’s “atypical” but less “atypical” than a hurricane.
Maybe I should be more precise and say that when I say it was basically coincidental I mean it was coincidental that this “big monster storm” that everyone predicted would swap the city was the thing that killed the wall.
There is video of a scoocer shot I saw on youtube the other day…. The guy takes the shot, it hits the goalies shoe, bounces off one side the net (the pole) hit the pole on the exact oppsite side of the net THEN goes into the net.
Sure the guy that took the shot “made” the shot but he didn’t really. Fate did.
Katrina was obviously the proverbial straw but it was “coincidental” that this storm everyone predicted would flood the city was that straw.
IMO the next decent amount of water was going to take the wall down. It just happened to be Katrina.
I’m not normally a fan of wizbang, but commend this type of reporting. Facts are good. Keep up the good work.
Interesting story, confusing, but still very interesting. Thanks.
A great post, lots of informative comments, a wide variety of views. Great stuff.
Some have touched on the issue of ‘where do we go from here?’. (I live near Sacramento, as some other commenters do, and thus have an interest in levee failures.) Are any of the official players in Louisiana’s little drama (COE, Congress, local & state officials, FEMA, etc.) changing? Isn’t funding as problematic over the decades to come as it ever has been? Isn’t rebuilding focusing on Category 1-3 hurricane-worthy efforts — with Category 4-5 efforts off the table? Correct me if I’m wrong, people.
So, what are we buying with all these federal and state funds for NO? What are we attempting to buy? Why? When? Just because a Category 4 is possible doesn’t mean it will occur. But if it does…?
In deference to Paul, I won’t bring up Nagin. That’s easy money. Or Landrieu. Or Blanco. Or the Louisiana Congressional delegation. Or…well, you know the drill.
Where does NO go from here?
JD wrote:
I live near Sacramento. We have a similar ticking bomb with the Sacramento River levee system, built and maintained by our friends at the ACoE, but no one can get a straight answer on what or when they will be strengthened past 100-year storm strength. And yet, the Sacto City Council cheerfully goes on allowing more building in the major floodplain that would go 15-20 feet deep should the Sacto or American or East Main Canal let go.
As a Sacramento resident, I can confirm JD’s insight. Depending on the location of the break(s), 50-100 square miles of California’s capital will morph into Waterworld quite quickly. But hey, you can count on the following:
– prohibitions on body surfing on city streets (its for the children)
– Jimmy Carter and Sean Penn are electrocuted while salvaging touch-screen voting machines
– the Kings move to Las Vegas (Maloofs’ desire all along)
– same sex marriage (flooding doesn’t discriminate, you homophobic bigot)
– state worker pay will be unaffected (natch)
– insurers of island & levee owners in the Delta will suffer an industry-wide bout of amnesia (double natch)
– illegal aliens will be issued drivers licenses and boating certificates (just because)
– No Child Left Behind becomes a punchline for 387 new jokes
– It’s Bush’s fault
In deference to Paul, I won’t bring up Nagin. That’s easy money. Or Landrieu. Or Blanco. Or the Louisiana Congressional delegation. Or…well, you know the drill.
Mikey if people would get thier heads out of their collective hind quarters, they’d see I’ve been quick to bash all of the above – when it was deserved. (or when it was the topic of that day’s news)
What wears thin is when no matter what the point of a Katrina thread, people devolve into partisan dumbshit and that’s all that gets said. — For the record I’ve been asking people to drop the partisan BS since before the storm.
Katrina was not a partisan battle. And it really does about a million of your fellow Americans a disservice when that is what it becomes.
Of course these comments are not aimed at you Mikey, it was merely an explaination as to why it sets me off.
Nagin, Bush et al are all fair gain IF IF IF it is germane to the conversation but in the whole scope of the event they where bit players. Both of them did a horrible job. But frankly no matter who was in those chairs, the outcome would not have changed much.
P.S. (The PERCEPTION might have changed but not the reality.)
Paul wrote:
What wears thin is when no matter what the point of a Katrina thread, people devolve into partisan dumbshit and that’s all that gets said. — For the record I’ve been asking people to drop the partisan BS since before the storm.
I take your point, Paul. We commenters often get off-topic, and I acknowledge your frustration on that score. (Hell, I’m one of the worst Nagin-bashers.) You do yeoman work, and I find your research provocative and thought-provoking. We may or may not accept your conclusions, but you certainly generate dialog.
Anyhoo, how’s this for on-topic: Has the COE published their “new” design data? That is to say, if underlying data for the original design were faulty, are we confident the current design work (or repair, upgrade, describe it as you will) is based on up-to-date and accurate info?
I am extremely angry and hurt, but not surprised. My older brother, Charles drowned in the flood, I watched his body decay as it floated in that funky water for 3 days tied to a utility pole. I also have the video to prove it!!
The fatal flaw in Paul’s argument is the following statement:
“So as a recap, the video we have is roughly 30 minutes after it started leaking and about an hour and a half before it gave way all together”
If one reads the IPET Draft Final Report Chapter IV, inlcuding the Appendices, one finds that the eyewitnesses reported that the floodwall was leaning over by about 6:30 AM, that the maximum surge level in the canal of about 10.8 feet above sea level occurred about 9:30 AM (based on guages and photos), that the floodwall was breached by about 9:00 AM, and that the video was shot at about 11:20 AM. An earlier part of the video showed that the parking lot of the building from which the video was taken was flooded by about 9:00 AM. Lakeview was already flooded by the time the video of the breach was recorded and the surge in the canal was back to an elevation of about 5 feet above sea level (near the base of the floodwall). Thus, the critical flaw in the argument is to assume that the video was shot shortly after the breach.
Regarding the Coast Guard pilot’s report of seeing the levee suddenly give way, the timing is not clear. The National Geographic video states that the Coast Guard did not arrive in New Orleans until after 2:00 PM and the pilot reports seeing the levee give way and remove a house at some later time. From studying the entire breach site, if this report is true, the Coast Guard pilot was probably observing the section of levee/floodwall south of the area seen in fireman’s video. In that area to south it does indeed appear that the levee and floodwal had moved outward to the east and removed a house in front of this section.
In short, the video is discussed in some detail in the IPET report where it is stated that the video was taken at about 11:20 AM, well after the breach and at time when the water level in the 17th Canal had returned to a level close to the base of the floodwall.
To all those who NEED ANSWERS & JUSTICE!
ABSOLUTELY the Corps of Engineers knew the Levee would eventually breach. Just ask Asst US Atty Curtis Collier of New Orleans if I didn’t report to him about the BAD GUYs who were building with substandard materials and that the levees were weak in 1986! It is incredible to me that all this secrecy on substandard building has been hidden by the FBI and the Corps of Engineers. The Corps did business with the LB Foster Co in New Orleans. Many employees were corruptly making kickback deals. Just ask Jerry W. Fisher of Pearl River LA or Tom Demaye or L Palmisano. Ask about Fisher’s connection to the Industrial Canal Project. My former Atty in 1986 is the current Judge Pat Hedges (Widow of Mr Hedges who was the GUESS WHO? What was his position when Mrs. Hedges told me that I’d lose my children if I didn’t keep my mouth shut? For the sake of justice for all those that lost their lives and property or loved ones; for all those still suffering; and for all those who may still lose all over again in the NEXT FLOOD because of the weak sections of the levee, go interview Fisher, Demaye, Palmisano, Gray, Hedges, etc! Good Luck, but THEY will try to stop you.
HUH? You think about as clearly as everyone else who works for the Corps.
The video was not shot at 11:30. The firemen said they saw water shortly after 9:00 rushing into Lakeview. They immediately went and got the video camera.
You say Max surge was 9:30. That’s when the firemen where watching and taking video. If you’re right, then you just proved my entire post. This was max water. (thanks for proving that btw)
I love when you guys from the Corps hang yourselves.
“Thus, the critical flaw in the argument is to assume that the video was shot shortly after the breach.”
Dude, you can see that the wall just started falling in the video. Are you blind or do you assume the readership is blind?
Wrongo Bongo… go read the Senate report. He called it over the radio. The Senate has the audio tape.
I do not remember that form the report but if it is the report, then it is just another lie from the Corps. (added to the other 10,000 or so) The guy who shot the video said it was just after 9:00AM. (go watch the video)
There was nobody from the Corps within 20 miles of the break (as per the Senate report) .. how do they know when the video was taken if not to ask the photographer?
You must fit in well working for the Corps… You lie without compunction and you’re not even smart enough to make the lies believable. Typical Corps material.